No. 1344

Rump of Beef, Mirotons a la Menagere

Pointe de Boeuf Mirotons a la Menagere

For mirotons take six ounces of either cold braised or cold boiled beef. Mince two ounces of onions, or one medium-sized onion, also a small shallot; fry them in butter with a whole clove of the garlic and a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf. Dilute with a little white wine and some brown sauce (No. 414), boil for twenty minutes, then remove the bunch of herbs and garlic. Season and place the sliced beef in a stewpan; pour the prepared sauce over, and let simmer for fifteen minutes, then lay it on a dish and cover the meat with the sauce and sprinkle chopped parsley over.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A leftovers dish from Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), built on cold braised or boiled beef sliced thin and warmed through in an onion-and-wine sauce. The whole thing hangs on how gently that final step is handled.

The hinge: barely simmerThe beef is already cooked, so the fifteen minutes at the end is reheating, not stewing. Keep the pan at a bare tremble; a real boil will squeeze the slices dry and stringy. Slice the meat no thicker than about a quarter inch so it heats fast.
Brown sauce, No. 414That cross-reference is Ranhofer's brown sauce, an espagnole: brown roux-based, built on veal and beef stock and well reduced. A good reduced beef stock thickened lightly with a brown roux, or a decent commercial demi-glace, stands in perfectly. The recipe says only "some"; roughly a cup suits this quantity.
Quantities and yieldSix ounces of beef, two ounces of onion, one shallot: this is a single generous serving or a small first course for two. Multiply straight up for more.
"A little white wine"Unspecified, as usual. About a quarter cup is right for this scale — enough to deglaze the onions and reduce away its raw edge before the brown sauce goes in.
The garlic and the bouquetThe clove goes in whole and is fished out at the end, as is the parsley tied with thyme and bay. This gives perfume rather than a garlic flavor, which is the point; chopping it changes the dish.
The twenty-minute boilThat first simmer is for the sauce alone, before the meat joins it. Do not shortcut it — it cooks the wine down and softens the onions, which should be quite soft and almost melting before the beef is added.
Butter and fatFry the onions in butter over moderate heat until golden and sweet, not browned hard. Scorched onion carries straight through to the finished sauce, which has nothing else to hide behind.
ServingServe immediately after saucing, with boiled or mashed potatoes to catch the sauce. It does not hold well on the dish, and a second reheating will finish the beef off.

A Little History

Miroton is old French kitchen shorthand for a dish of sliced cooked meat reheated in a sauce — most often beef with onions — though the origin of the name is obscure. It was one of the standard fates of yesterday's pot-au-feu or boeuf braisé in French domestic cooking, which is exactly what the tag à la ménagère, "housewife's style," signals: a thrifty preparation rather than a restaurant one. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894, included a long run of rump-of-beef variations, and this one sits among them as the practical afterthought — what to do with the cold remains of the braise once the grand version has left the dining room. The cross-referenced sauces are the machinery that made such economy possible in a professional kitchen, where a pot of espagnole was likely to be at hand.